The Lincoln County leader. [volume] (White Oaks, Lincoln County, N.M.) 1882-189?, 1887-10-29
THE OBNOXIOUS GUEST.
The Cholera and How to Prepare for
It.
Individual aud Collective CIcRnIi-
noss-SpirituRi and Physical ORE
der-The Body's Response TO
n Motions OF tho Mind.

der-The Body's Response 20
the Motions OF tho Mind.
II Is not unlikely that the epidemic cholera
will pay a visit to the United States during
this year or the next. Having overleapcd
the boundaries OF the region in which it is
cngondered-the swamps and jungles Of the
lower Ganges-and entered upon its pill
grimage, it will not, it may be presumed,
finish its perambulation until it has mado
the circuit OF the continents. 1t is, there
fore, advisable for mankind, whoever aud
wherever they may be, TO begin thinking
and doing in time-to make such material
and mental preparation for the obnoxious
guest that as little death and Generalization
as possible may result from the visitation.
The law of material preparation may be
comprised in a single word-cleanliness-
cleanliness, individual and collective, Of the
person and of the environments; the avoid
ance and removal of whatever by which
the earth, the air or the water may be be-
fouled or contaminated, and abstention
from whatever by which the vital energy
Of the system may be INSTRUCTED or en-
feebled.
Cholera is a visitor to whom neatness Is
abhorrent. 1t travels through dirty ways;
prefers the squalid and the unwashed for
companions; chooses, as its ~favorite places
Of s%ojourn, localities and inhabitants where
untidiness prevail; towns and cities where
the streets and alleys are receptacles for gar
bage, where drainage is absent or defective,
and where decaying matter, in which noxious
emana'ic ions are generated, testers in the sun
shine and ferments under the gaze of the
moon; tenements overcrowded and unclean,
md individuals whose gross and filthy ways,
and the impairments which they occasion,
are standing invitations to pestilential as
sauIt.
There was both practical wisdom and
wholesome irony in the words of the late
Lord Palmerston, when he met the petition
of the General Assembly of the Free Church
of Scotland for a national humiliation on
account of the cholera, with the counter sug-
gestion to look to their drains.
The moral preparation is to begin by TAX
ing counsel of common sense and intelli-
gence; rallying such manhood as the individ-
ual has at command; getting rid of all super
stitious notions about the cholera-which is
neither a miracle nor an accident-being a
special divine dispensation OH account of
national sin and endeavoring to obtain as
correct all ilea as possible Of its character
and phenomena.
This in order that irrational terror may
be avoided; for, as the body responds to the
motions of the mind, terror is debility, and
debility is a temptation to an attack-a sig
nal held out by a traitor within the fortress
to indicate that it is pregnable.
Without doubt thousands have suffered
from epidemic diseases who, but for the
prostration incident to fear, would have
been unmolested. Men vino knowingly and
constantly violate the laws of nature in their
modes of living ought to nave their minds
a up to boldly face the consequences,
but these are usually the ones who are most
apt TO invite III the destroyer by their UNI
manly cowardicc.
The cholera derives its terrors not so much
from the number it removes as from the
seeming carelessness of its attacks. the sum
mary manner in which its victims are dis
patched, and the general impression which
bbulii biAoh OlG 10 90 ilhtA1 W w ONNl AuhGll
as another. 1t takes away, within q brief
period, such as otherwise would have dropped
off, one at n time, without exciting surprise
or remark. Taking n series of years to-
gether-say five including md five not in
GLIDING a cholera visitation-and it will, in
most cases, be found that the aggregate of
mortality in the former is little if any
greater than in the latter.
Pestilential diseases are not to be looked
upon as accidents. Nor-although the exc
cution of their office may not be entirely
agreeable to the individual sulferer-alto-
gether as Gala mites. They are no new in
vention. On the contrary, in some form or
other-if not cholera, something else-they
have visited humanity from time to time,
wherever it has sojourned, whenever there
has been an accumulation of such as through
defective constitutions. tainted blood, pros
tration from excessive indulgence or exhaus-
tive labor, had become proper material
wherein for it to operate. In short, they
are the scavengers of communicate ex-
purgators. They initiate in the cause of
natural selection, promoting the survival Of
the fit by the removal of the unfit, and thus
ministering to the common wellbeing. They
may DO looked for, sooner or later, wherever
there are putrid human structures and pol
luted localities.
The only absolute defense against con-
tagion is u soun1 mind in a sound body and
the sounder the mind and the body it in
habits, the more implicit the assurance.
The more firmly and squarely the reason
sits upon an unshattered throne, the less the
danger that the one will be displaced or the
other demolished. Humanity was not con-
structed of such unseasoned materials nor so
loosely thrown together, that its structurally
and f~unctionally impaired individuals will
become empoisoned by a passing epidemic.
No strictly normal man or woman takes ON
these itinerant diseases, no matter how ex-
treme the exposure.
IL is always advisable for human beings
to bear in mind the fact that hesn is not inn
mortal and TO deport themselves accord
ingly. Both the spiritual and the tqmnoral